1. Technical Field
The present invention refers to an apparatus and a method for positioning medical treatment devices or treatment supporting devices, which are moved to a predetermined position by a transportation means.
In operating rooms and surgeries or rooms where operations or treatments are prepared, it is often required to move treatment devices or treatment supporting devices to precisely predetermined positions, either to verify a treatment result by means of computer tomography or nuclear spin tomography or, quite simply, to set-up a specific operating set for the respective surgeon concerned. In the latter case, at present all conceivable devices are moved in the operating theater by auxiliary staff to the position desired by the surgeon, which involves considerable effort.
If image-generating devices are to be used for intra-operative purposes to verify the treatment result or to update an operating navigation, it is even more complicated to move the required devices to the position there where they are needed. It is, for example, very difficult to manually move a mobile nuclear spin tomographic device so as to be precisely parallel over an operating table, as such a device is very heavy and its free internal diameter is usually just a little bit larger than the operating table's width, so that the device can only be moved manually on rolls very slowly and requires a high expenditure of energy; the danger still being that the tomograph may be tilted at the operating table.
2. Description of Related Art
To avoid this problem, it has become common use to move nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) tomographs over the operating table and away therefrom on a rail mounted to the room ceiling, the operating table being firmly fixed in the room opposite to said rail. This solution involves both constructional and architectonic efforts (strengthening of the ceiling, static expertise . . . ) so that a room cannot be used for some time.